The Revenant-movie reviewJanuary 10, 2015

MoviesJanuary 10, 2015 The Revenant By Mark Roget The star of The Revenant is the majestic Rocky Mountain wilderness, which has been lavishly captured by Manuel Lubekzi’s glorious natural-light cinematography. But that is not enough to keep the film from becoming so exhausting that it eventually wears one down. There are so many incomprehensible flashbacks and strange symbolic juxtapositions that interrupt the action that the film—especially after the first hour—sinks under its heavy metaphorical weight. The poor script (inspired by Michael Punke’s novel) by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro Iñárritu—who also directs—lacks a compelling emotional narrative; and its thin plot hammers one over the head with so many disasters that you end up feeling assaulted. In addition, Punke’s novel is not faithfully rendered in The Revenant (someone returning from the dead) as the film features an Indian son (not in the novel) as a way for Iñárritu to push for what he perceives as the racism of American 1820s frontier days. With its half-hour tale embedded in the 2-1/2 hour movie, the film ends up in a brutal series of survival moments that are agonizing, not only for the film’s characters, but for the moviegoer as well.

The Revenant begins with a gruesome ambush by Indians on a group of fur traders as they skin beaver pelts. The Indians are looking for a woman they believe has been kidnapped, but instead of questioning the mountain men about her whereabouts, they simply massacre everyone.

As one hears the sound of arrows tearing into human flesh and watch torn bodies bleeding into mud and marsh, the ghastly battle makes it difficult to keep one’s eyes fixed on the carnage. Yet, this is just the beginning as the bloodbath and savagery continue throughout the film. This is, arguably, the most vicious, violent, and grisly film I have seen in a long time. There were members of the audience who could be heard crying “oh, no” as they hid their faces at many of the gory moments that ran relentlessly in interminable scenes. The story centers on Hugh Glass, a mountain man who is mauled and ripped apart by a bear. He is left for dead by his hunter comrades and struggles to make it back to civilization. After the bear stomps on him (we actually hear the sound of bones crunching), Glass falls into a river and over a waterfall; he plunges on horseback from a mountaintop; eats a raw fish that he pulls out of the river and that is not yet dead; devours raw buffalo liver; rips out the bloody innards of a dead horse, then slides into the cavity of the carcass to keep warm.

Whew! The disasters that Glass suffers are so unending and unbelievable that after the audience got over its shock at the bloodbath, one could hear some moviegoers laughing as another and then another and then another Road-Runner catastrophe befalls him. Leonardo Di Caprio, who is layered in dirt with filthy beard and hair, puffy face, and bug-eyed stare, is almost unrecognizable; his role could have been played by any other actor. After all, DiCaprio rarely speaks in full sentences here, but rather in grunts, groans, and whispering hisses. Indeed, DiCaprio has almost 50 stunt doubles who take over for him in much of the film. Supporting actor Tom Hardy as Fitzgerald, the villain who killed Glass’s son and left him for dead, doesn’t fare much better as his strange accent and throaty mumble isn’t understandable. Furthermore, the funereal-dirge musical score by Bryce Dessner, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, add to the downer, slit-your-throat atmosphere of the film. After moviegoers suffer to survive along with Glass, the mind-numbing, senseless ending leaves one dumbstruck and depressed. That said, the movie does have a redeeming quality. It makes one viscerally aware and appreciative of the life affirming, life-enhancing benefits of Capitalism—of its generous technology and scientific products that range from life-saving medicines, air travel, railroads, electricity, heat and air-conditioning, automobiles, refrigeration, cell phones, computers, television, cameras, DVD’s, CD’s—all of which are noticeably and painfully absent in the film.